A Slice of the Seattle Blogosphere: OVP, IPOs, and Small Businesses

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Heading into the holiday weekend, I wanted to highlight a few interesting recent blog posts from around town. They cut across the topics of venture capital, IPOs, and small business owners.

—OVP Venture Partners, based in Kirkland, WA, has a new blog as of this summer. In a recent post, managing director Gerry Langeler talks about what goes on in the room after entrepreneurs make a pitch at a partner meeting. One of the most tragic things the VCs can say is, “Right team, wrong idea.” Langeler’s advice: “If you have pulled together that once-in-a-lifetime team, please work hard to make sure the business you are chasing is worthy of the talent.”

—Christian Chabot of Seattle’s Tableau Software wrote a post this week entitled “Yesterday’s Most Successful Companies Wouldn’t IPO Today.” That pretty much says it all, but Chabot backs it up with data from a large sample of technology companies. He argues that today’s minimum standard for taking a tech company public—roughly, profitability and $100 million in annual sales—means (if applied to previous cases, adjusted for inflation) today’s most successful public companies wouldn’t have been able to do an IPO in their first 10 years. Chabot’s says his analysis points to “grim tidings for early stage venture capital.”

—Hillel Cooperman of Seattle’s Jackson Fish Market ran a great Web comic from XKCD poking fun at adult responsibilities (“I don’t know what you just said because I was thinking about Batman”). Cooperman has also been posting videos of talks from the Small and Special conference from earlier this summer—inspirational stories from people running small, financially successful businesses. The most recent video is of Nisha Kelen from Fleurish, a Seattle-based floral design shop.

Gregory T. Huang is Xconomy's Deputy Editor, National IT Editor, and Editor of Xconomy Boston. E-mail him at gthuang [at] xconomy.com. Follow @gthuang